Calvin (11 page)

Susie: Or maybe just the basics. A taste.

Me: Filled with this knowledge, the maturing generation struggles against enormous odds to discover something new. It faces a unique challenge, bears a great burden. The Change the World Lottery cannot be won.

Susie: Maybe the advances made by our generation will be ethical rather than technological. Maybe our generation will heal the atmosphere and enrich the ethnosphere.

Me: Ethnosphere?

Susie: Yeah. The thin vapor around the earth that is made up of all the dreams and hopes and ideas and imaginations of all the people of all time.

Me: Does it have a hole in it, like the ozone?

Susie: We blow holes in it all the time, but then someone like you comes along and fills it all in again, makes it creamy and fluffy again, like meringue on a pie.

She sort of breathed in sharp after she said that, as if she couldn't believe the words that had come out of her mouth.

Me: See, when you say stuff like that, I know I'm making you up, just like I'm making up Hobbes.

Susie: Maybe we're all making everything up as we go.

Hobbes: Kind of a pie-in-the-sky idea, if you ask me.

Susie: Maybe—

She stopped.

Susie: Maybe this is the last chapter.

Me: Last chapter?

Susie: Of my book, I mean.

Me: Everybody dies?

She made a sound like a fake sigh.

Susie: No—I mean this, you and I—

I didn't dare guess what my delusion was trying to say to me, but I'll tell you something, Bill. Lying there in that tent, I loved her in the front of my brain just as much as in the sides and the back. I wanted to tell her, but even with a sick brain, I knew better than to say it like that, to come up on her quick like that. So instead I worked into it slow.

Me: Did you really call me your boyfriend? Back there at Noah's?

Susie:

Me: Nah—you didn't.

Susie:

Me: Because that would be too weird.

Susie made another exasperated sound.

Susie: Calvin. Don't pretend you don't know about us.

Me: Us?

Susie: Because you know you love me. You've always loved me.

Me:

Susie: And I love you. Deep … deep down.

Me:!

Susie: You fell in love with me in first grade and you never wanted anybody else in our life. Don't try to deny it. That's why I kept all those hate valentines, Calvin.

She said it in a way that sounded like she was mad that she'd had to spell it out for me.

Me: Well, that may prove that I love you …

Susie:

Me: But it doesn't explain why
you
love
me
.

Susie: Sometimes a thing remains a mystery, a thing that boggles reason, that baffles and strikes wonder in the most logical mind.

Me:

She laughed, and then she looked right through the dark and into the corneas of my eyes and through the irises and all the jelly eyeball stuff and dodged the floaties and focused in on the foveae of my retinas.

Susie: Okay, I'll tell you why I love you, Calvin. But I might only tell you once, so listen up. You have the guts of a tiger, a space explorer, a race car driver, a luge athlete. You have this amazing imagination. You're never boring. You aren't afraid to ask hard questions and find out there aren't any answers. And you—you also know me in a way nobody else knows me.

Suddenly I felt sorry for her, whether she was real or not—for anyone who would love somebody who threw away food and half their water supply to feed his imaginary tiger.

Me: But … but you're beautiful … and people like you, and I'm … you know …

Susie: I know about you, but you don't know about you. I bet you didn't know that half the girls at school think you're cute, and funny, and scary smart.

Me: No girls even look at me.

Susie: They're sneaky about it.

Hobbes was laughing somewhere just behind me and to my right, and Susie, the only truly cute girl I've ever met, is telling me to my face she's mine or I'm hers and I'm deciding at that moment that this schizophrenia thing has its upside and I should just go with it.

Me: I kept all the nice valentines I made for you but was too chicken to give you.

Susie: You made nice ones?

Me: Yeah.

Susie: Will you give them to me when we get back?

Hobbes: If you get back.

Me: Yes. I'll give them all to you. Including the one I've already made for Valentine's Day coming up.

Susie:

Me: So—does this mean we get to kiss and stuff?

Hobbes: Only if I can eat your face.

Me: I was talking to Susie, you mangy—

Susie: Well, I don't know … schizophrenia … it's a bit of a turnoff … Yes.

The wind that had been thrashing the sides of the tent suddenly quieted.

Me: I thought you just said yes.

Susie: Have you ever kissed anybody?

Me: Sure. Dozens.

Susie:

Me: No.

Susie: No. And you know why?

Hobbes: Because girls don't want to kiss him.

Me: Because girls don't want to kiss me.

She raised up on her elbow. I could smell her breath, which was like the best smell in the world, like she'd just eaten a breath mint, except I knew she hadn't.

Susie: How do you know girls don't want to kiss you? Have you ever tried?

Me: No. You have to talk to them first. I think that's the rule.

Susie: Right. And you don't talk to girls. And why is that?

Hobbes: He's socially awkward.

Me: I'm socially awkward.

Susie: They don't know that. I know it, but I don't tell them. I let them be intimidated by your silence.

Me: Why?

Susie: Because I wanted to be your first kiss.

Me:

Susie:

Me: Have you ever kissed anyone?

Susie: Of course. I had to practice so that when you finally got around to kissing me, one of us would know what to do.

Me: Always a good idea to plan ahead.

So I kissed her.

I kissed her and she kissed me back so I kept kissing her and she kept kissing me and we kissed and kissed and I wondered if anybody else in the world had ever felt like this because how did they ever stop, and me in my parka and snow pants and hat and her in hers, we couldn't stop. I thought we would burn a hole in the ice.

That kiss felt like the meaning of life.

Me: That kiss felt like the meaning of life.

Susie giggled.

Hobbes: You made her giggle. Yowza!

Me (to Hobbes): Out!

Susie: What?

Me: I'm speaking to Hobbes.

Susie: Stop it or I'll make you cry.

Me: Oh, yeah? Like to see you try.

So she kissed me again, and I swear it did, Bill, I swear it made me cry, and for the first time I knew something my brain could never know, and for the first time I liked that it could ask a bigger question than it or I could answer.

When we stopped to breathe, I opened my eyes and the moonlight and starlight filled up the tent.

Me: Now I understand why a guy can give up his freedom and shackle himself to one girl and spend the rest of his life working at a job he hates just to support the girl's offspring and then he dies, the end.

Susie: Yeah, and now I understand why a girl can give up her freedom and shackle herself to one guy and ruin her body giving birth to the guy's offspring and put her career on hold and not realize her dreams of travel so she can cook and clean and raise the offspring of the guy and then she dies, the end.

Me: Wow. You win.

I drew her close.

Me: You're real, Susie. Even if you're not, you're the realest thing that's ever happened to me.

 

When I woke up in the morning, the sun was rising and a warm wind was blowing outside and Susie was looking at me with this Mona Lisa smile on her face.

I jumped up, knowing we had to travel as fast as we could, knowing we didn't have enough food and water for a whole day, knowing it was probably going to take us a whole day, knowing you'd be there, Bill, waiting, wondering, worrying, with that comic strip.

Susie: Good morning, Calvin.

Hobbes: Good morning, Calvin.

Me: Morning.

Susie:

Me: Don't bother rolling up your sleeping bag. We're leaving the stuff behind.

She was staring at me funny.

Me: What? I know it cost money, but maybe we can come back for it with a snowmobile later. The sled is slowing us down, and we've got to get a serious move on. We're leaving it.

Susie: Is that all?

Me: Should there be something else?

Susie: Yes.

Me: What?

Susie: Well, we kissed, you know.

Me: I haven't forgotten.

Susie: You can't kiss me and act like everything is the same.

Me: I'm not acting.

Hobbes: Here we go.

Susie: You have to wake up in the morning and treat me like somebody who has exchanged saliva with you for the first time.

Me: Susie, let me explain: We have to
go
.

Susie: Argh. Never mind.

She sat up and started lacing her boots.

Susie: We kissed.

Why was I so scared to tell her that at the age of seventeen I had just had the happiest event of my life, and it was all downhill from here because Susie McLean had kissed me like she meant it? And how I was scared that it might not be real, or it might not ever happen again because life wasn't meant to be that lucky?

But the expression on her face was the same as she'd had in first grade when I'd called her gross and booger brain. It was the same face I'd thrown snowballs at, and I knew I had to tell her.

Me: Okay, let me explain something to you.

I put my hand on hers so she would stop lacing her boots.

Me: See, Sooz, your brain stem takes care of your biological functions: your heart beating and your lungs breathing. That's the part of your brain that wires you up to mature and produce hormones and so on. Okay, mine did a good job on the hormones, at least. And then there's the R-complex or your reptile brain, and that one is responsible for basic survival. It's aggressive and territorial and drives you to have sex. That part of my brain also works well, to my huge relief. And then there's the limbic system, and that's over your emotions and moods. That's the one that makes you fall in love. That one took care of business when I was in first grade.

Susie (smiling soft):

Me: And then there's the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is the brain that is intuitive and analytical and creative and spiritual. The cerebral cortex is the brain that is responsible for art and science and all the things that make us human. That's the brain that makes you get married in a church and makes you stay in the relationship for sixty years and makes you write poetry to your wife when she's seventy years old. And that, Sooz, is the part of my brain that may be sick but is firing on all cylinders over you right now.

Susie: Your cerebral cortex?

Me: Yup.

Susie: That's the most romantic thing … I mean, ditto.

Me: Ditto? I make this whole long speech and you say ditto?

Susie: Okay, let me put it this way: your cerebral cortex is firing up my R-complex.

Me: That sounds interesting.

Susie: Oh, it is, it is.

She stood up.

Susie: But we have to go.

We quickly ate our peanut butter tubes and our raisins, and I kept glancing at her and she kept being there. When we were done she dug in the duffel bag for the compass and pulled something out with a whoop.

Susie: Cookies!

Me: Cookies?

Susie: Thank you, Orvil Watts!

We grinned at each other. Susie checked the compass and we got walking.

It wasn't a white sun, it was orange as tiger fur. The lake ice was rough now, slabs like tumbled blocks, and swells of shattered ice. Soon I was sick of hearing my own breath pumping in my ears.

We were still sore and blistery from the day before, and it just got worse. We put one foot in front of the other until I forgot why I was doing this and where I was and who I was. Hobbes growled a lot. For a long time we didn't talk. We were stuck in that place between hating to move and not having any other option.

Susie checked the compass often.

Susie: What does
S
stand for again?

Me: It's a direction.

Susie: What's a direction?

Directions didn't mean much in the middle of a white-lake nothing.

Orvil was right when he said the lake was a leftover ocean. People who only looked at her from shore, from solid ground, never really knew anything about the vastness of her. She was an immortal being. Immortal beings don't understand mortals. They don't understand what it feels like to know that any given minute might be your last. The lake didn't know what it felt like to be hungry, when your stomach started digesting its own protective lining and your intestines were collapsing in on themselves and your liver and pancreas were puzzled and on standby and all your cellular functions had nothing to function with.

Later in the day the sky was white-blue and the ice was blue-white and it felt like we were in a sensory deprivation cell. We weren't even casting shadows. It was warmer than the day before, a lot warmer, in fact, but the wind never let up, and it sucked the heat and water right out of us. We took sips of water, and I made Susie drink the last bit. I started talking all over the place to keep our minds off it.

Susie: You're scared, aren't you.

Me: Why do you say that?

Susie: Because you're talking a lot. You're trying to keep my mind off things.

Me: Things like what?

Susie: Like I can't feel my feet anymore.

Me: Did you know it
is
possible to find two snowflakes exactly alike?

Susie: No. It's not.

Me: Yes, it is. Of course, the odds of finding twin snowflakes is one in 10
158
, which is greater than the number of atoms in the universe.